Hi everyone, this is the regular Thursday posting to let you know what is coming up in the near future.

Rockpolishers

We ran a very successful rock polishers weekend, see other posts for details but in summary, we made a very good showing and it showed our potential members how active the club can be and what wonderful machines we fly.

Prospective members weekend

Hard work by James Moore, Sarah Platt, Martin, Nick and Gill LeGras at The Ludlow festival and more work over the prospective members weekend with Steve Male, Matthew Cooke, Charles Carter and John O’Reilly as well has resulted in a very successful weekend and sales of our new Flying Start packages. We believe that this focused targeting of our type of potential member is going to be the most effective way of improving our recruitment. We involved the Shropshire Star and you can read the excellent articles on line.

Trial Lesson Packs

Allan Reynolds has done a fantastic job in producing a set of packs in envelopes which get handed to course members and Trial lessons when they arrive. The pack tells them everything they can do after their flight(s) so they have something to think about and process to reinforce their experience. If you are signing someone in then please ensure you give them one of the packs, they are clearly labelled in the office.

Membership renewals

Please can I remind and encourage those of you who have not yet renewed to do so. It really is vital that we maintain or increase our membership and every late or forgotten renewal makes managing the club and maintaining our fabulous facilities more difficult.

Road

We now have stone on site for pothole filling and so we’ll be arranging road repair sessions very soon. Please put your name on the list in the clubhouse or contact the office if you can spare some time to help. In the meantime please do not drive on the grass alongside the road unless absolutely necessary. Despite the potholes, the road is still useable if you drive slowly and as the grass is still very wet, driving on it will cause further damage to the airfield. We have had a very wet winter, next time you fly have a look at the wet patch adjacent to the road at the north east corner. This is getting larger and driving off the road will carve up the field to the extent we cannot repair it.

Simulator

The simulator body is now installed. Dave Crowson, Roger, John O’Reilly, Orch and others have all contributed to getting us this far. The next step is to install the computer and the controls, wire it up to the screen and press the big button. This will be a huge benefit for training when we cannot fly.

Winch

The Skylaunch main winch is back on site with its new, more powerful engine and is still having its gearbox adjusted for the best performance.

Web cam overheating

The computer that processes the data from the weather station and serves the pictures up to the web is overheating so we have had to remove it while we attempt a repair. A replacement is the last resort as it runs a particular software configuration. The fix is proving to be quite difficult, there are 3 experts working on it as I write!

Last year we ran an open day and combined it with a “longest day”. This year we are going for a more targeted event. The marketing team will be publishing the method and the purpose shortly but in the meantime can I please ask instructors, launch directors and winch drivers who would be willing to help me on that day to get in touch with me directly. Our aim is to be able to fly people all of the day so we will need instructing and winch cover. We won’t be doing a dawn or dusk flight so you don’t have to worry about having to get up too early!